Manchester United's Wayne Rooney was omitted from the team to
play Everton. Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images
Everton's fans prepared meticulously
for the homecoming, buying a blow-up doll to pass across the stands
and penning a new chant – "No woman, no Kai", to the old Bob Marley
number – but it was their team who mastered the art of torture,
scoring twice in added time to take a point off a
Manchester United side that had spared Wayne Rooney the sadistic humour of
the tribe he left behind.
Rooney's omission from the United squad that left the Lowry
Hotel in Manchester to motor to the ground where he made his name
was punishment laced with empathy. "We are not going to subject him
to the abuse he gets here," said
Sir Alex Ferguson before United surrendered a 3-1 lead
to goals by Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta. This calculated strategy
both erected a protective cordon around a troubled employee and
reminded him of what he will surrender if he becomes a victim of
his appetites.
In the wake of a soul-melting frenzy around his personal life,
United were eager to distinguish between private morality and
professional duty. There was a distinction in the club's thinking
between issues pertaining to his marriage and the hedonistic streak
the recent kiss-and-tell allegations pointed to. Where Rooney was
failing to behave like a committed Manchester United footballer,
the club felt within their rights to express fierce displeasure.
Drinking, smoking and living on Las Vegas non-time would be the
offences likely to compromise his work ethic.
So Ferguson played a win-win hand. Rooney had stayed with the
team as usual but the manager sent him home on the morning of this
most daunting return to Goodison. Hobson's choice is how Rooney
probably saw it: a painful domestic inquest or a run across the
minefield of Evertonian loathing. On that front United's supporters
subverted the plot, taunting the home crowd with chants of "Rooney
shagged your gran".
Why mention this? Because it is the context and climate in which
the career of England's best player came to a 24-hour halt, the
environment in which United tried to win a tough away game without
him. Also it reveals how the private lives of footballers have
mutated into an especially rancid type of mass entertainment; a
burlesque in which the mighty are perennially tempted and then
exposed and humbled when they succumb.
Rooney's demotion was a compassionate act and a memo that said
great football clubs roll on without even their brightest stars. It
said careers are ruined all the time and that Rooney could spoil
his too. Ferguson's ace is that the man he left behind is addicted
to the game, to playing, to throwing himself into combat. To have
this taken from him, even for a single afternoon, might have the
effect of smelling salts. Kindness was delivered with an
accompanying kick.
Though United "threw away" a victory, in Ferguson's words, they
also played with ease and enterprise, as if to prove they can shine
without their enfant terrible and chief headline-maker.
Dimitar Berbatov reached the levels of one the world's top
strikers. His touch and vision were exquisite. His goal – United's
third – was a masterpiece. Receiving a chip from Paul Scholes that
floated over the shoulder of Sylvain Distin, Berbatov steered the
ball infield to slice off the Everton defender's angle and used the
outside of his right boot to drive a shot past Tim Howard, whose
acrobatic leaps and blocks had kept David Moyes's team in the game.
Rooney-centric United fans will say missed opportunities proved
the case for keeping him in the side regardless of the home crowd's
hostility. True, Scholes skewed a chance over the bar and Nani
provoked Ferguson's wrath by screwing a shot wide when team-mates
were lining up to finish, but then Rooney has been no goal-machine
of late.
United have been coaxing him back to peak condition after his
disastrous World Cup in South Africa. Encouragingly, for Ferguson,
Berbatov sensed the talent gap in United's forward line and
resolved to fill it, parading the kind of conviction that was
lacking in his often languid efforts last term.
Ferguson says Rooney will be back for Tuesday's Champions League
tie against Rangers and the visit of Liverpool next Sunday. Away
fans aside, this buys him another week inside the United compound.
Sometimes the dazzling power of the modern footballer/one-man
corporation conceals the might still exercised by the biggest
clubs. At United, David Beckham and Roy Keane fought the law and
lost.
Rooney is nowhere near that point, but can expect to hear an
emphatic restatement of team principles; not in the moral sphere,
but where indulgence and indiscipline threaten to inflate into
self-destruction. At 24 he has received the first real intimation
that all careers end, some gloriously, some with cheap blues lines
filling the obituaries.
Received at first as a victory for the mob, the dropping of
Rooney on this September Saturday came to be a showcase for
Berbatov and a demonstration of Everton's spirit and tenacity. In
other words, two clubs managed fine without him.
